Purplebricks' latest TV advertising campaign starts today

Purplebricks is starting a new wave of TV advertisements today, continuing its theme from earlier this year as a sponsor of Team GB for the Tokyo Olympics - now to be held in 2021.

Campaign company Snap London describes its advertisements as a “playful take” on the sponsorship emphasising its role as ‘The Official Estate Agent of Team GB’. 

The campaign continues to features ‘Alice’, a notional Purplebricks agent, who is now sharing news about the company with other athletes during lockdown, emphasising options for both in-home and virtual viewings and valuations. 

The advertisements feature three decorated Olympic athletes.

These are Bianca Walkden, Triple World Taekwondo Champion and 2016 Rio Olympic Bronze Medallist; Dan Goodfellow, Silver Medallist in 2019 Men’s World Championships 3m synchro dive and Olympic Bronze Medallist at Rio 2016; and Moe Sbihi, Rower and Olympic Gold medallist from Rio 2016 in the Men's Coxless Fours and Bronze Medallist at London 2012.

The campaign, which will run until later this year, will have parallel campaigns across social media and other channels.

“We know that when training for the Olympics that an estate agent is not the usual training partner you’d expect, so with this latest iteration of our sponsorship campaign we’ve continued to embrace the incongruity. We’re still the Official Estate Agent of Team GB, we’re still proud to support them on their extended road to Tokyo, and we’ll still keep those fires of support burning along the way” says Gemma Schmid, head of brand and communications at Purplebricks.

The agency has already produced gold coloured For Sale boards to emphasise the Team GB sponsorship.

You can see the advertisements below.

The cost of Purplebricks’ sponsorship of Team GB has not been revealed but it has raised eyebrows amongst some analysts who have assessed the financial position of the agency.

The most recent analysis of online agencies’ in the marketplace was conducted by comparison website GetAgent which says their collective market share was just 4.8 per cent in February 2020 - the last representative market period before the Coronavirus pandemic.

Purplebricks remains the dominant online player but has suffered badly according to the analysis. Its monthly listings, which peaked over two years ago at 6,358 in April 2018, ran at 4,400 a month on average during January and February 2020.

Purplebricks’ market share peaked at 4.25 per cent in August 2019 but was only 3.45 per cent in January and February this year and the comparison site says its analysis of Purplebricks’ listings in the 2019 calendar year suggests the agency will see a reduction in revenue of some £7.18m compared to 2018.